I’ve spent the day thumbing through Vladimir Nabokov’s famous, or perhaps infamous, novel “Lolita” for the 2nd time.

All I can say is that no one in the history of all the books I’ve read (and I believe I’ve read quite a number) can write like this Russian virtuoso.

I leave you with this: the book’s magnificent introduction, brought to (sexy-voiced) life by Jeremy Irons and straight from intoxicated mind of Humbert Humbert.

“Voila! In view humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin, vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.

The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that its my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V.”

Oh, how I love alliteration!

Interior design porn!

I’ve spent the past hour ogling the designs of  Kelly Hoppen, the famed British designer who lent her magic touch to Prince William & Kate Middleton’s pad. She’s best known for her minimal yet glamourous style, and her use of monochromatic palettes and rich textures. I first heard about her a few years ago, when my mom purchased some of her books.

Page after page took my breath away.

I hope these pics leave you salivating, just like they left me!

People may scoff at my oddly hued breakfast choice, but I think it is marvelous.

Perhaps I care more about Cat in the Hat than current crazes, wonder more about Wonka than getting wonky on a weekend, and have ideas veering on the childishly bizarre, but I do know one thing: you are happiest and most beautiful when you are yourself.

After all, why would you choose vanilla, unspeckled, uncluttered and universally accepted, when you could have the  crazy, absurd, and wonderfully scrumdiddilyumptious green eggs and ham!

An ONION PEEL in it. A freakin’ ONION PEEL!

Goodbye Coffee Bean. And I suggest you bid me, an (at least) once a week customer, adieu as well.

That’s all.

The Red Velvet Ice Blended has been haunting me ever since I first got news of it. The thought of ingesting that monstrous amount of calories, however, was holding me back.

I thought about it and thought about it until one friday, I finally caved. I dragged a friend to share with me and dashed to CBTL. The drink wasn’t cheap at 185 pesos for the larger size, but I just really curious.

If you’re wondering whether it was worth it or not, I’m going to say not really. It made for a solid vanilla milkshake, but the red velvet element was absent completely, both in flavor and in appearance.

As you can see from the photo, it is more pastel-pink than vibrant beet-red. Tastewise, I was looking for something with cake bits, or chocolate, or cream cheese on it, or just about anything that said RED VELVET, but it just wasn’t there.

It just wasn’t there.

No thanks to CBTL for deceiving this hungry fool.

You can probably see from the above photo that Jamba Juice screams orangey sunshine and happiness. The entire staff chirpily greets customers as soon as they walk in through their glass-paneled doors.

There was a photo booth that allowed customers to snap pics, which then got sent directly to their emails. As can be expected of camwhoring Pinoys, we went jam-ballistic when we saw it!

Your author (aka me), perusing the expansive menu. See how even the lime green wall and orange sofa behind me are so cheery? Jamba Juice is the Disneyland of fruit shakes. Such a happy place!

My indecisive self had quite the struggle picking from the multitudes of flavors, but the Banana Berry appealed to me most.  Bananas, blueberries, apple-strawberry juice, raspberry sherbet and frozen yogurt were what made up this magenta blast of berryness.

The Banana Berry shake was blitzed to a velvet pulp (no seeds on my tongue, yay!) and was a great relief from the scorching weather outside. I liked it a lot, except for the fact that I couldn’t taste any bananas. For Php 135, it is a tad pricier than a Big Chill shake, but the ingredients tasted fresher and more natural. In terms of quality, you’re definitely getting your money’s worth.

Here’s a snapshot of Caribbean Passion, which was made of passionfruit-mango juice, strawberries, peaches and orange sherbet. I only took a sip, but I enjoyed the refreshing citrus flavor. Among all the ingredients in it, the tart sherbet stood out most. It was a bit overwhelming, so order this if you like oranges. If you’re not a fan, stay away!

Apart from shakes, Jamba Juice also has a slew of dishes on the menu. Don’t mind the terrible, blurry photos, as they do no justice to the following dishes I’d  highly recommend:

Jamba Juice’s breakfast wraps are arguably the best I’ve tried in this country! They are covered in a yummy whole wheat wrapper and served piping hot. There are two variations, both of which we sampled.

The Spinach and Cheese wrap was a mix of greens and really gooey cheese. You know when you bite into something cheesy (like pizza), and those milky strings just ooze onto your teeth? Mmm.. that’s what its all about.

The spicy chorizo wrap is even better than the former. I only took a bite, but that singular nibble was a mexican fiesta in my mouth. I tasted corn, cheddar, bell pepper, salsa and chorizo all in one mouthful. This wrap is a lot spicy, a little tangy and all-around delicious. A must-order!

Above lies a blurry picture of one of the best pretzels I’ve ever had. It was soft and warm, gooey when you pulled it apart, and had crispy flecks of parmesan cheese. Jamba Juice is the last place I thought I’d find a lustworthy pretzel, but… sigh.

As a whole, I give this four stars over five. I loved that Jamba Juice had great meal options apart from its specialty shakes, and I’m excited to go back for that pretzel!

The reason for this is not a distaste for the usual breakfast fare (truth be told, I adore it) but rather, a lack of time. Like most college students, I am a slave to convenience. On the rare days I wake up early enough, I purchase an overpriced latte, and nothing else.

Often, as I miss yet another breakfast or consume a sad excuse for one, I daydream about partaking of an authentic Filipino almusal. I only get the chance to sit down to one when my family vacations in the quaint town of Liliw, Laguna. There, we stay with my grandparents at Tree Farm, where I am required to rise at the crack of dawn.

Still heavy with sleep, I head to the sun-lit dining room for my morning meal. As I step inside, my senses are engaged. I take a whiff of the air perfumed with the aroma of warm pandesal; hear the sizzle of frying garlic; and gaze upon the spread that awaits me.

My drowsiness magically fades. My stomach grumbles loudly. I am ready to eat.

My grandmother, who I fondly call Wowa, is a true testament to Tagalog folks’ reputation of being gracious, gallant hosts. Each morning, she prepares a feast of traditional Pinoy dishes, a practice handed down to her by her parents. As she was born and raised in Liliw, the repertoire consists of choices with a Tagalog heritage, many of which were served at her own lolo and lola’s breakfast table.

Wowa and my cute cousin Ruth at Tree Farm

One such dish is longganisa, a delicacy of the nearby Lucban, deep-fried and served with coconut vinegar. Another is crispy tawilis, a sardine found only in the shores of the Taal Lake. Wowa taught me to temper this fish’s intensely salty flavor with chopped tomatoes and onions.

From Sta. Cruz, she gets kesong puti, a soft white cheese made of carabao’s milk. Most of the time, I stuff the keso inside pandesal. Other times, I mash it into piping hot rice, allowing the steam to slowly melt the cheese.

In typical Pinoy fashion, rice is a big part of the meal. We place mountainous heaps of sinangag, Pinoys’ buttery, garlic-laden version of fried rice, on our plates. I, a total tapsilog groupie, enjoy pairing it with eggs and tapa or fried beef marinated in vinegar. Wowa makes an extraordinarily tender tapa; the perfect complement to a sunny side-up egg, plucked straight from the chicken coop on our farm.

For those wishing to add a hint of sourness to the dish, she prepares a side of pickled vegetables or atchara. Personally, I would rather douse my tapsilog in vinegar and minced sili labuyo, but that’s just me. The beauty of Wowa’s almusal, and perhaps Philippine cuisine as a whole, is that there are no hard and fast rules. Diners have the unlimited license to tinker with their food, especially when it comes to one’s preferred sawsawan or sauce. My grandmother, whose almusal spread always includes a wide array of seasonings, welcomes the idea with open arms.

Let’s move from savory to sweet.

In my opinion, nothing encapsulates the taste of Liliw quite like the town’s doughy delicacies. From the hole-in-the-wall bakeries that dot the town, we purchase a host of breakfast sweets. My absolute favorite is Liliw’s version of hotcakes, a fluffy pancake smeared with margarine and sprinkled with sugar. A close second is balitaw, a donut-like confection coated in a hard muscovado sugar shell.

A close up look at Balitaw

For health buffs that, I presume, balk at the idea of consuming so much sugar, my ever-considerate lola serves some of the region’s lighter treats. One is puto alsa, a large bilao of fluffy white rice cake. Another is bonete, a milky, bell-shaped roll. It is crusty on the outside, doughy on the inside, and the perfect spouse to a hot cup of kape barako. It is known to be the pride of Liliw (apart from their famous tsinelas), and it couldn’t be more deserving of this title.

As can be expected, sitting down to a meal like this takes an infinitely longer amount of time than my rushed breakfasts in the city. Between chatting with my grandparents, heading back to the buffet table for multiple rounds (admittedly, I always do), and sipping hot coffee, almusal can take up the whole morning. However, I don’t mind. My breakfasts at Wowa’s farm may be few and far between, but they are treasured. They give me an opportunity to pause and relax, thinking only of enjoying my family’s company and experiencing a good meal.

That is what a classic Filipino almusal is: an experience. Food is not to be eaten in a mindless hurry. To the contrary, Pinoy breakfast fare is to be enjoyed in a leisurely manner, and every flavor-rich bite is to be savored. Luckily for me, my loving lola makes such great food that lingering at the table for hours, savoring my meal, feels like just a few minutes. Needless to say, I can hardly wait for my next breakfast in Liliw.

I ordered the Three Pointer (Php 125), a burger resting above an orange pool of mozzarella, cheddar and cheese sauce. Below it lay tomatoes, caramelized onions (but no onions for me), lettuce and the requisite bun. Did I like it? Not really. For only a little over a hundred bucks, it was an undeniable steal, but not something I’d go back for.

The burger tasted like it was boiled, under seasoned and measured only about a third of the bun’s circumference. My ideal burger has a 1:1 meat to bun size ratio, and this, my friends, did not meet that standard. The bun, on the other hand, was the regular store-bought type, kinda waxy and lacking taste. The cheese sauce was decent, but the mozzarella c0mponent was seemingly absent.

In conclusion, due to the general lack of flavor, I found myself having to pile on the taste-saving trifecta: mustard, ketchup and hot sauce. Zark’s gave this burger three points, but I’d give it a half-point for taste.

Oddly enough, the meal’s highlight was the fries, which were crispy, well-seasoned and cut thick, just the way I like them.

Okay, so maybe you think I’m being a little bit overcritical, given that the burger was so cheap. I agree with you. Quality has a price, and it is definitely higher than 125 bucks. But in terms of quantity, Zark’s Burgers definitely hits the spot. Pay this joint a visit only for two reasons: A) If you’re ravenous but running low, or B) two syllables:  Tomb. Stone.

]]> http://biancarodriguez.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/zarks-burgers/feed/ 2 biancarodriguez IMG_5044 IMG_5046 IMG_5048 IMG_5047 IMG_5050 http://biancarodriguez.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/minestrone-and-quino/ http://biancarodriguez.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/minestrone-and-quino/#comments Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:42:57 +0000 biancarodriguez http://biancarodriguez.wordpress.com/?p=985 Continue reading →]]> See this bubbling pot of minestrone? It was made by friend Quino, who, I like to think, is like a pot of minestrone on his own. This Italian soup is comforting and traditional, and though it is an unpretentious dish, it consists of the most extraordinary ingredients. After some stirring and simmering, they begin to work in tune, creating a symphony of bold flavors. Much like my wonderful friend.

Quino and a delicious paella he made on one of our previous dinners.

Quino is the quintessential renaissance man: his talents number the stars. He is an award-winning essayist, a historian, a teacher, a speaker, a linguist, and as you can see, a fantastic cook. All these noteworthy skills, combined with his kindness, generosity and the gusto that he lives life with, brew together to form the Quino we all know and dearly love.

I’ve lost track of how many of Quino’s dishes I’ve sampled over the years, but I can say, with utmost conviction, that they were all superb. This minestrone, a family recipe of his, is no exception. It is rich yet light, and sublime on chilly nights, when rain is pouring and you crave the warmth of some hearty soup. While the classic version features Italian sausage, Quino drops in some hungarian sausage, lending the broth a spicy kick. I could slurp down bowls and bowls of it.

Minestrone Rustico (sans beans)

Ingredients:

Hungarian Sausage, cut into chunks

Bacon, cubed

Olive Oil

Butter

4 chopped tomatoes

3 cloves of diced garlic

1 onions, roughly sliced

Shell pasta

Spinach

2 Potatoes (cubed)

1/2 of a large carrot (cubed)

1 cup tomato sauce

1/2 litre of water

1/2 cup good white wine

2 Chicken broth cubes

Paprika

Salt and Pepper

Beans (optional)

Procedure:

1. Sweat bacon and sausage in generous amounts of olive oil and butter.

2. Add tomatoes. Let them cook until wilted.

3. Drop in garlic, onions as well as potatoes and carrots.

4. Pour in the half cup of white wine, reduce, then add the chicken broth.

5. Bring the broth to a boil, then add in a cup of tomato sauce, water and the pasta you are to use.

6. Once the soup boils, reduce to low heat. Simmer for around 30 mins.

7. Add in paprika, basil, salt, pepper and more olive oil. Stir regularly.

8. Serve hot, with crusty bread.